Associate professor to perform in this year's spring faculty recital

The Department of Music is featuring associate professor of music Leslie Jones in this year's spring faculty recital. The recital will be held at 7:30 p.m. March 5 at Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus.

"The whole Southeast community is encouraged to come, not just the Cape Girardeau community. The event is not free, but tickets are sold at the box office. Since they organize these ahead, we send out information on it on a database to thousands," Department of Music administrative assistant Beverly Delph said. "Lots of great things happen here at the River Campus. This one in particular will be fun because of the varieties of music. This will appeal not only to people who love classical music, but there's a little something for everyone."

This particular event will feature songs from popular films like "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" The mood of the recital will be dark, yet will have a thrilling twist.

"This year is the first year I have done this particular piece, but it is not my first performance here," Jones said. "I joined the faculty in the fall of 1999, and I have done a handful of these recitals. This one is interesting because I am not doing it alone, and I am actually doing it with other wonderful people. This gives an element of variety by working with my own pitch in combination with the others.

Jones said that working with other people was a key motivation in preparing for the performance.

"I wanted to collaborate more and I thought that would be more fun. What is neat is, we are actually doing a song from the first act in Sweeney Todd when Ms. Lovett is wanting to turn everyone into meat pies. It may be dark, but it is also funny and I think it will turn out well. Then, we are doing a popular song from "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" I had actually done this performance not too long ago for a good, full audience at the University of Tennessee. It was classically played with a medieval text. There was also a group of female music educators doing a set of all a cappella. It was a great turn out there and they have a campus about our size. I am definitely looking forward to this particular performance, and I hope everyone can come out and enjoy the show."

The Department of Music administrators encourage faculty to put on several of these recitals a year. The recitals are for everyone who can come, including members of the community, alumni, other faculty and especially students, within and outside of the River Campus community.

"The numbers of recitals vary each year, Director of Choral Activities Peter Durrow said. "It typically runs three to four faculty members per semester, but it really depends on the load on the staff. Each of them are required to do it at least once and is expected to perform because it is a part of their professional development here at Southeast. They try to get these planned out in at least one year advance. I'm excited for this one. Her [Jones'] voice is phenomenal. She can sing real low notes and she can even sing the real high notes. I overall enjoy hearing her sing. As always, we encourage all the students to come, but it is actually required for voice students to attend."

General admission for this event is $10. The event will be held in the Robert F. and Gertrude L. Shuck Music Recital Hall at the Southeast River Campus. More information on this event can be found at the box office or by visiting www.rivercampusevents.com.